Historic Preservation Commission Meeting Minutes December 2009

HPC Chair Bob Booher called the meeting to order at 7:30 pm. The other members present were David Stopak, Mimi Styles, David Neumann, and Sandy Klingenberg (ex-officio). David Neumann took minutes for the meeting.

Approval of Agenda/Adoption of Minutes

The agenda proposed by the Chair was reviewed and adopted with modifications. Members made a few changes and then approved the minutes of the regular meeting of November 18. The reading of the minutes of the regular meeting of October 20, 2009 was postponed until the next regular meeting on January 19, 2009.

Review of Projects

There were no projects to be reviewed.

HPC Rules of Procedure and Building Permit Application Process

Members continued the long range project of step-by-step discussing and revising a set of Rules of Procedure for the HPC. A 17th draft of the Rules of Procedure was produced and David Neumann agreed to update the revision and send out the revised version to all members.
The Bylaws of the HPC will remain unchanged. The work started by Margot Bohan to clarify and rethink the building permit application process will continue in parallel with the rewriting of the HPC Rules of Procedure.

Council Report

The Town will set up a Town Meeting regarding the LOS as more funds need to be allocated to the effort. The Council also wants to receive input from residents on the options for a Town position on the CSX proposal to raise the locally historic humpback bridge. At this point Town Council members seem to favor a lowering of the tracks. The Town has been asked to comment on the CSX Project Gateway without sufficient factual information.

Humpback Bridge

Bob Booher and David Stopak discussed and explained various aspects of the CSX proposal, e.g. the need for CSX to evaluate the effects of their proposal on historic resources. Bob Booher has written to various parties involved in this evaluation of the effect on historic resources. We had some difficulty in the discussion as we have limited information on the National Gateway Project proposed by CSX.

PC-HPC Working Group

The Chair reviewed for the HPC commissioners the status of PC-HPC Working Group. Members discussed the problem that the subgroup on Zoning Appeals, etc. has not yet been able to meet. The concept of a trigger was discussed. There were two ideas that based on size, coverage, or other criterion, once a certain size, volume, or percent coverage was reached (a) a stricter set of ordinances would govern the construction or renovation or (b) the board of zoning appeals would be required to decide whether a construction plan could go ahead. In both these ideas there is a trigger, in (b) the Planning and/or Historic Preservation Commissions would play an increased role in determining whether a plan could go ahead. The discussion was also about the “FAR” subgroup which seemed to have determined that the FAR method would not be a useful tool to control mansionization. There was discussion again on how this was determined, but that was not clear.

Issues Postponed

There were numerous issues postponed. One of these was to review Design Guidelines, another was to discuss the ideas Margot Bohan had found from her reading of building procedures in Phoenix AZ. The discussion on revising the list of contributing structures was further postponed to January.

Adjournment

The Historic Preservation Commission meeting was adjourned at 11:05 pm. The next meeting will be held Tuesday, January 19, 2010, starting at 7:30pm.